The wallpaper is one of my favorite parts of the nursery. It’s Clarke & Clarke’s Globetrotters. My mom and I made these paper stars to hang above the crib… I’ll have to show you how to make them in a separate post, but Francis does really like to look at him. The rug I custom ordered through Glory Rays in Wanchai (gloryrays_hmy@hotmail.com).

The wallpaper showcases so many places that are important to us! The Golden Gate Bridge of my hometown of San Francisco and where we met, the coliseum in Rome where we honeymooned, the Great Wall of China is Francis’s birthplace and home, Neuschwanstein is the most romantic place the Mr. and I have been together, and the Empire State Building gives a little love to the Big Apple where we’ve spent so much time working and hanging out with great friends.

I used little yogurt cups to organize all of Francis’s accessories.

The sheep mobile is from Bla Bla Kids. I wish I could say I knit it myself… maybe someday!

Isn’t he a little cutie?

The little elephant rocking horse is by Elmer and I purchased it on One Kings Lane. It was actually the first thing I bought for the little one!

The baskets are from Attic Lifestyle. We were so lucky to be given so many fun gifts on display on this bookshelf that I’ve actually had since I was in junior high if you can believe it. It’s lean profile is perfect. It’s nice to have a little iPod speaker in here for lullabies. A few other detail shots for you…

I feel so thankful to have such a happy place for us to hang out together!

This year I’m looking forward to showcasing the little bundle on our Christmas card, but I thought it would be fun to review our Minted holiday cards from Christmases past. By the way, today only get 15% off Minted holiday cards and free shipping withCYBER2012 and 25% off everything else with CYBER25.

For the past two years, we’ve taken the photo on our deck. The above design is Gallery Classic by Sydney Newsom.

This is Moglea’s Quilted Christmas. It was our first card in Hong Kong and we wore our qipaos and also had ‘Merry Christmas’ both written and phonetically spelled out in Cantonese. Being able to customize things like this is really one of the best things about Minted cards.

They were pretty tasty. I think they even give my traditional St. Paddy’s cupcakes a run for their money.

The cupcakes were made for my good friend K.C.’s 30th birthday!

So gave them a cute little name. A little branding never hurt anyone… or did it?!

I picked up boxes for transport at Complete Deelite down in Central and I’m glad I did after all the work that went into these babies I wouldn’t have wanted them to get wrecked in transit.

And here the birthday gals is blowing them out. A tray of cupcakes each with a candle is pretty festive.

And I can’t help but Hong Kong-ify this post a bit… the party was in the basement of the Jardine House… who knew there was anything even there… but I thought this was a cool picture of a very iconic Hong Kong building.

Last week we hosted 18 navy and marine service people and as a surprise bonus we were invited on a tour of their ship, the USS Bonhomme Richard.

What a cool ship she is!

The Bonhomme is an amphibious operation, which means the back of the boat looks like a gator’s mouth: there is a wide opening in the back well that can be opened even larger as the ship lowers its ballast to the back end to let out giant landing rafts that can transport a dozen humveess and tanks to shore, loaded with marines. The ship had three of these crazy rafts. You can see in the photo above the giant fans that inflate the crafts so they can float to shore.

I’d never really seen tanks or humvees in person and they are so stinking big!

Oshkosh, as it turns out, makes more than little boys overalls. It was amazing to think of all of the planning that goes into just loading up a ship like this.

And while I felt a lot of pride to be an American with such a fully prepared armed forces, I also was very cognisant of the fact that none of the equipment on this boat had ever been used.

Up top, there was a runway to land helicopters and jets. It was pretty cool to see the helicopters up close.

This is the giant missile system that protects the Bonhomme.

But our guide said that they would be in trouble if they ever had to use it as it has a relatively short range. Those little circles each have a missile behind them.

The boat afforded some great views of Victoria Harbor. We took a 30-minute boat ride out from Central to board this giant boat.

Above you can see both IFC and ICC which is pretty cool.

Our tour was led by a really lovely lady whose job it is to DRIVE this boat! Can you imagine?!

She showed us around her “office” where she drives the boat.

The Bonhomme is a steam ship and can travel up to 20 knots.

She weighs in at 40,000 tons and regularly carries 1200 Navy and can transport 1,800 Marines.

I thought all the navigational equipment was really quite beautiful in its own sturdy, traditional way.
Here I am pretending to ring the bell… which is actually automated!

The secondary mission of the boat is medical and one whole floor is a hospital. The room above can be turned into an ICU; you can see all the lamps and equipment just needs to be lowered into place.

After aircraft carriers and medical boats, it has the third largest medical facilities of all of the Navy’s boats. One whole floor is dedicated to medical.

This elevator takes patients from the airstrip directly to the O.R. The ship has everything a modern day hospital has and has several operating theaters and can accomodate 300 patients in an ICU.

Isn’t this a cool shot into an O.R. from the port hole? To end, I’ll leave you with some shots of the service people over at our home for a BBQ.

My neighbor Kirsten and I hosted and we asked some girlfriends to accompany to have more people on hand to chat with the service people. Unfortunately, the Mr.’s were caught at work, so we ended up having the Marines and Navy guys help with the BBQing. I think they actually miss doing things like this and they did a much better job than the girls would have done on their own so it all worked out!

We hosted the BBQ down by the pool / parking lot in the kiddie play area. It was nice to be outside!

Tequila shots were requested by some and so we obliged!

And finished up with some nice desserts!

A sweet ending to a sweet night! It’s always such a pleasure to meet these men and women and thank them for their service. If you’re interested in hosting, simply email: mealsinthehome@gmail.com

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